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Anderson man sentenced to prison in sex-crime case

Published 8:39 a.m. PT Nov. 21, 2016

Darren Michael Brown shielded his face from a photographer's camera during today's sentencing.

A 30-year-old Anderson man was sentenced Monday to five years in prison after pleading guilty under a plea bargain in September to 10 felonies, including extortion and lewd acts with children.

Darren Michael Brown, who must register as a sex offender, was arrested in November 2015 as part of a multiagency investigation that began in Illinois.

He was accused of coercing at least four underage teenagers to send him sexually explicit images of themselves.

Brown told Anderson police in June 2015 when he was served with a search warrant that he was “not into” children and never intended to hurt anyone.

Brown was not arrested at that time, but that all changed Nov. 19, 2015, when he was arrested and formally charged the next day with 17 felonies, including lewd acts upon a child, extortion, providing lewd materials to a minor and possession of sadomasochistic child or youth pornography.

Police have accused him of obtaining thousands of pornographic photos and videos of minors living all over the United States by allegedly threatening children to force them to send him pornographic selfie videos and photos.

According to an investigative police report filed in Shasta County Superior Court, the Plainfield Police Department in Illinois contacted Anderson police in April 2015 after a 15-year-old girl and her parents met with officers there and said she began chatting with a man believed to be Brown over a phone application called Kik.

The teen said the man later “threatened her existence” if she did not send photos of her naked and wearing underwear.

She described him in a subsequent police interview as “very controlling, like the guy in ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’,” the police report said.

The teen, who said she was afraid of what he might do, said she sent him photos of her naked and wearing only a bra and panties, and that his request later progressed to her sending videos of her in and outside of the shower “doing inappropriate things,” the police report said,

Police said they later identified three other teens, including one in Indiana, who shared similar stories.

APD Detective Casey Day wrote in the police report that he interviewed Brown as officers searched his home and that Brown told him he was involved in bondage discipline dominance and submission sadism and masochism (BDSM).

Asked whether he had threatened the Illinois girl to distribute her photos to others and to her school, Brown admitted he did, the police report said, adding that he also admitted to “pushing” her to send him suggestive photos and videos.